Yeah but does it have protective properties? Like idk maybe it adds corrosion resistance or sth
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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For most of the shuttle, yes, but the removal of the paint from the tank specifically was because the tank had a foam coating that was not actually meaningfully protected by the paint.
I always thought it looked cooler with the orange tank anyway
Orange makes it go faster. Not the fastest color but it's up there.
Is NASA run by orcs
Context hat
Back when NASA was flinging things into space for the first time, the tolerances that were even possible were extremely tight. Every pound mattered (every pound still matters, but because we have other things to do once we get to space nowadays, plus every pound is expensive).
600 pounds of white paint for the fuel tank was considered unnecessary, once the engineering team figured that it didn't actually protect the special foam covering of the fuel tank anyway. Thus the distinctive orange color!
For all the people in the world except the ones from Liberia, Myanmar and the United States, 600 freedom units = ~272 kg
To many significant digits. It's 300kg
Thank you, finally something sensible
That's 4 and half men. Or a minivan's worth of kids. Or 100 buckets of KFC
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Oh, I thought the pictures were backwards. The orange being the natural color and the white being paint is really critical information for it to make sense lol
Oh my eyes glossed over the word "paint". Thanks.
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High end bicycle equipment has weight specs in grams.
It's always hillarious to me to see boomers on expensive bikes that aim to save every gram while they could save 20kg on themselves.
Or skinny dudes with enormous ballsacks wearing tight Spandex on 15 pound carbon fiber bikes, but a 20 pound motorcycle lock.
If you are trying to lose weight, you should be using the worst, heaviest bike possible.
Well, not if you still want to have some fun while doing so.
But I agree, that a regular bike should suffice and you don't need to worry about optimizing gear weight if you're not competing for anything and just ride it for your own well-being.
Well, not necessarily. A bike that's got a full carbon frame also absorbs shock and vibration from the road better. This means you can ride longer distances without getting fatigued in places like your wrists or ass. Longer rides = more exercise.
But once you have a carbon frame, chasing grams on other components gets to be a bit silly.
So using fewer calories.
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But, why ? You drink a bit more water that day and it’s void.
But what if you drank more water and you didn't have the weight savings?
It's a competition between brand. They're at the point where decrease a single gram is incredible task and are all racing to become the lightest weight and aero-est bicycle and get to claim that.
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I'm too dumb for maths because I have dyscalculia, but i am always amazed by the engineering crowd on how they could improve efficiency by finding and tweaking just the little things.
Its simple rocket math. Every lb of weight must consume fuel.
Si.pky. 1 lb of weight needs 1 lb of fuel to escape orbit. But the fuel has weight also. So the effective fuel you need to lift the rocket and payload is exponential.
The harder stuff is orbital mechanics. Getting things into orbit is easy. Having thwm go where you want is the hard part.
The tyranny of the rocket equation. Generally, 1% of weight is payload, 85% is fuel.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/escaping-the-tyranny-of-the-rocket-equation/
Good article for pointing out that specific rocket math. The optimistic tone of that article, though, is very much a product of its publication date of February 2020. The space programs have suffered major technical, financial, and political setbacks since then, and the geopolitical moment doesn't really lend itself to megaprojects like moon missions.
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Fun fact: Columbia, pictured with the white tank, was the heaviest shuttle and was not modified to have the airlock necessary to dock with the ISS because the performance losses compared to the other shuttles made it difficult to use for ISS operations.
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The real question is why the default color is orange and not white or gray.
The polyurethane spray foam insulation is orange.
That's the default skin. It costs 100,000 doubloons to unlock the sick neon green and black skin.
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Remove all the tanks and shit on the bottom to really save weight and just let the shuttle fly? It's not rocket science.
Found the Kerbal Space Program player?
If it's just the shuttle, the odds of the wrong part disconnecting when you hit spacebar go way down.
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"Lower the inertial mass." -- Miles O'Brien, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Season 1, Episode 1.
Lower the inertial mass
—what to say when you want your obese Trekkie friend to take care of their health
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